Chapter 19.—Wicked Men Judge
Others by Themselves.
28. But those who, giving the
rein to lust, either wander about steeping themselves in a
multitude of debaucheries, or even in regard to one wife not only
exceed the measure necessary for the procreation of children, but
with the shameless licence of a sort of slavish freedom heap up the
filth of a still more beastly excess, such men do not believe it
possible that the men of ancient times used a number of wives with
temperance, looking to nothing but the duty, necessary in the
circumstances of the time, of propagating the race; and what they
themselves, who are entangled in the meshes of lust, do not
accomplish in the case of a single wife, they think utterly
impossible in the case of a number of wives.
29. But these same men might say
that it is not right even to honor and praise good and holy men,
because they themselves when they are honored and praised, swell
with pride, becoming the more eager for the emptiest sort of
distinction the more frequently and the more widely they are blown
about on the tongue of flattery, and so become so light that a
breath of rumor, whether it appear prosperous or adverse, will
carry them into the whirlpool of vice or dash them on the rocks of
crime. Let them, then, learn how trying and difficult it is for
themselves to escape either being caught by the bait of praise, or
pierced by the stings of insult; but let them not measure others by
their own standard.